Dahlia Lithwick is good on the Montana Supreme Court’s rejection of Citizens United. It probably wouldn’t save it from being overturned anyway, but the angle I would take in the same situation if I wanted to join the majority (I would probably have joined Nelson’s dissent) would be to pretend to take Kennedy’s logic seriously. “OK, campaign expenditures by corporations entirely independent from campaigns get the same First Amendment protection as individuals. Since ‘entirely independent’ has nothing to do with how any known PAC operates, the campaign finance restrictions in question are therefore upheld.”

Actually, I have a certain tiny soupcon of sympathy for Tony Kennedy. The man clearly WANTS to be a straight-up doctrinaire conservative, but he has just enough brains and conscience that sometimes a case comes before him where he alternatively goes “okay, that’s a dumb argument, I’m not putting my name on it” or “I can’t sign onto this, I won’t be able to sleep at night.”

If he were just a little bit dumber and more callous than he is, he could float serenely inside the same bubble that Alito and Roberts do and never have a care in the world.

Hmm. Anthony Kennedy is a graduate of Stanford (also attending the LSE) and Harvard Law School. You’re an anonymous schmoe commenter on a blog who by your own admission isn’t really paying much attention.

But you think he’s “dumb.”

Gotta love the left-wing circle jerk here in the LGF comments, where a bunch of know-nothings pat themselves on the back for being smarter and more virtuous than anybody they disagree with.

Kennedy’s credentials put the burden of proof on those contending that he is “dumb”. I don’t see it.

How do you judge the intelligence of a supreme court justice? He gets to be right simply by deciding to be so, if 4 colleagues agree. Kennedy has little difficulty finding 4 colleagues to agree with him. Facts are a distant second to his opinion in a determination of the “truth”.

If you were allowed to arbitrarily decide what the truth is, what kind of things would you say?

One thing that I learned from the Internet is that conservatives “know their place”. What enrages them about liberals is that we don’t. The only thing that matters to a conservative is that there is a hierarchy, and they know their place in the hierarchy, no matter how lowly. Liberals don’t respect hierarchies, which conservatives find the most offensive thing in the world.

You can see that here. Anthony Kennedy is, in David’s mind, one of our rightful rulers. How dare we question him? Don’t we know our place?

Honestly, I was more disappointed by his transparent appeal to authority than anything else. I’ve SEEN Nieporent construct intelligent arguments and rebuttals. I’d even go so far as to admit he’s gotten the best of me once or twice.

There wasn’t any argument to rebut. The entire post was “it’s clear to me that kennedy is the dumbest current sitting justice,” with a followup of “Nah, he has just enough brains not to always disagree with me.” If there were specific cases pointed to, or observations about patterns in his jurisprudence, I could have rebutted it. But how can one respond substantively to “He’s a dummy”?